Our style of play

[Pablo]

I still think the only team we really need to worry about is City. A few injuries to key players and United will fall away IMO. They're ****.

[timmokay]

I hope we can go back to just ignoring Man Utd. It sounds like we're worried about them. But we should just be worried about us.

100% Agree, we are in a bit of a slump, play to our our strengths,not worry about theirs, they should be worried about us. IF we can get our form back we can take anyone.

[S-RED]

If we are losing against utd I'd have someone deliberately break fernandes so not only is he out forever he walks with a limp similar to that cuntish skip he does before a penalty, for the rest of his life. ****ing ******.

We're not Everton.

Agree, but happy to make an exception in this instance

[Mr Pink]

Someone like shaqiri would be perfect for this- bring him on with 5 min left and just tell him, look you weren’t gonna be featuring in the next 3 games anyway...

[Ams12]

Shaq would break himself most likely!


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Sus]

Shaq would break himself most likely!


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Not if he leads with his new hair

[Paul12]

Not if he leads with his new hair

That would result in a tangle injury.

[Fosterbloke]

That would result in a tangle injury.

And a VAR offside decision against us.

[Buzzo]

The Athletic has put together an article detailing how every team in the PL warm up pre match. I'll not put them all, but here is ours, and a few selected others.

Liverpool

Jurgen Klopp is standing in the centre circle at Anfield, his arms folded across his chest as he stares intently at the opposition warming up. Behind him, coaches Pep Lijnders and Vitor Matos watch on as their players divide themselves into pairs and knock 10-to-15-yard passes to each other across the turf.

It’s the first drill in a 22-minute warm-up for the outfield players, who emerge from the tunnel some seven minutes after John Achterberg has started putting the goalkeepers through their paces.

After five minutes, head of fitness and conditioning Andreas Kornmayer calls the 10 outfield starters into a circle in the centre of the pitch, while the substitutes embark on a series of rondos together in front of the Main Stand. The “drill sergeant”, as he’s affectionately known by Klopp, oversees a range of stretches before again they are paired off for some short, sharp running exercises.

Then Lijnders steps in, handing out white and yellow bibs as they head towards the Kenny Dalglish Stand. A small pitch is already marked out using cones. It’s five vs five. The two centre-backs stand at each end wearing yellow while in front of them it’s the four in white against the four in the training jackets. It’s one touch and it’s frenetic as Lijnders barks orders.

It’s all about ensuring Liverpool are ready to perform with the kind of tempo and intensity Klopp demands.

For most, the final five minutes of the warm-up means shooting practice. However, the two centre-backs are exempt as they take it in turns to throw balls into the air for the other to head before spreading out to exchange 40-yard cross-field passes.

There are three elements to the shooting drill for midfielders and attackers which involves the full-backs darting down the wing. There’s a cross from the left and then one from the right to dispatch. Thirdly, there’s a lay-off from a team-mate close to the edge of the penalty box and you turn before hammering goalwards.

The players stop for a brief drink before Kornmayer brings them together again in front of the Main Stand. There are a series of jumps and sprints in twos before they dart off down the tunnel.Liverpool

Jurgen Klopp is standing in the centre circle at Anfield, his arms folded across his chest as he stares intently at the opposition warming up. Behind him, coaches Pep Lijnders and Vitor Matos watch on as their players divide themselves into pairs and knock 10-to-15-yard passes to each other across the turf.

It’s the first drill in a 22-minute warm-up for the outfield players, who emerge from the tunnel some seven minutes after John Achterberg has started putting the goalkeepers through their paces.

After five minutes, head of fitness and conditioning Andreas Kornmayer calls the 10 outfield starters into a circle in the centre of the pitch, while the substitutes embark on a series of rondos together in front of the Main Stand. The “drill sergeant”, as he’s affectionately known by Klopp, oversees a range of stretches before again they are paired off for some short, sharp running exercises.

Then Lijnders steps in, handing out white and yellow bibs as they head towards the Kenny Dalglish Stand. A small pitch is already marked out using cones. It’s five vs five. The two centre-backs stand at each end wearing yellow while in front of them it’s the four in white against the four in the training jackets. It’s one touch and it’s frenetic as Lijnders barks orders.

It’s all about ensuring Liverpool are ready to perform with the kind of tempo and intensity Klopp demands.

For most, the final five minutes of the warm-up means shooting practice. However, the two centre-backs are exempt as they take it in turns to throw balls into the air for the other to head before spreading out to exchange 40-yard cross-field passes.

There are three elements to the shooting drill for midfielders and attackers which involves the full-backs darting down the wing. There’s a cross from the left and then one from the right to dispatch. Thirdly, there’s a lay-off from a team-mate close to the edge of the penalty box and you turn before hammering goalwards.

The players stop for a brief drink before Kornmayer brings them together again in front of the Main Stand. There are a series of jumps and sprints in twos before they dart off down the tunnel.


Manchester United

As discussed here, United do a lot of rondos during their warm-up.

The United warm-ups in Louis Van Gaal’s era were characterised by attacking outfield players lining up in formation and going through a series of near-identical passing moves that finished with the winger or full-back squaring and the forward putting the ball into an empty net. Frequently when opponents were involved, however, things didn’t flow quite so smoothly.

Ryan Giggs liked to conserve energy too during his 24-year career. In our interview in May, Giggs told how he realised his approach differed to Louis van Gaal’s when he became assistant to the Dutchman at United. “Louis used to always say, ‘What was the warm-up like?’” explained Giggs. Often the players were “poor” and Van Gaal would be aghast. But Giggs added: “As a player, I used to simply warm up for the game, so I would take it easy. I would have been a nightmare under Louis, I didn’t want to peak in the warm-up.”

For last season’s visit to Old Trafford by Liverpool, it was possible to detect Ole Gunnar Solskjaer had selected a surprise back three as Harry Maguire, Victor Lindelof and Axel Tuanzebe warmed up together. Tuanzebe then suffered an injury and jogged down the tunnel early, with Marcos Rojo stepping up from the reserve group.

Kieran McKenna is the coach who leads this section of the warm-up at United, tossing the ball high for aerial clearances or firing it along the ground to sharpen control. For other positions, groups of two or four might break out for passing drills. Each player has a different way of striking the ball — Bruno Fernandes tends to apply topspin — so a reminder of that before kick-off is somewhat useful.

Midfielders and strikers will inevitably finish the pre-match routine with some shots from the edge of the box at the reserve goalkeeper. The No 1 catches crosses and passes out from his box to various distances. There are, of course, stretches and running sequences. The simple requirement is to get blood circulating and muscles flexed. The drills finish with Manager Ole Gunnar Solskjaer standing in the middle of the goal, arms behind his back allowing each starter one opportunity to strike the ball at his head, before they sprint off to the dressing rooms.

Tottenham Hotspur

During a Tottenham warm-up, there tends to be one player that your eyes are instinctively drawn to. Tanguy Ndombele can normally be found practising his tricks and flicks whenever there is an idle moment. It is as mesmerising to watch as the drops of the shoulder and perfectly-weighted passes he produces in matches.

Generally, though, the Tottenham warm-ups are pretty businesslike affairs. After going through dynamic stretches, the players join together for a rondo but instead of standing around in a circle, the players are constantly moving as they receive the ball and after they’ve passed it.

The group will then split, with Ledley King looking after the defenders and giving them exercises like lobbing balls up in the air for them to head. Then they will do a series of quick repetitions of volleying the ball back to him before he will test their acceleration by rolling balls in front of them to run and sprint onto.

The attackers, meanwhile, will do exercises like practising their shooting — passing, receiving a lay-off, passing again and then smashing a shot normally past the goalkeeper. The other keeper will be practising getting up and down quickly as the goalkeeping coach Nuno Santos throws balls in different directions for him to save. At this point Harry Kane takes himself to one side and jots down a few notes to assist with his pre-match motivational speech before rejoining the team.

After more stretching and a few sprints, the players return to the dressing room for their final instructions. Then, it’s game time.



Manchester City


Pep Guardiola’s two assistants, Rodolfo Borrell and Juanma Lillo, make an interesting double act because the former is a big bear of a man and the latter is pretty diminutive. They set the drills up on the far side of the pitch at the Etihad (which happens to be furthest from where the media are) and the players soon follow them out, some of them bursting out of the tunnel with a ball at their feet. Riyad Mahrez is usually among the very first out.

For a few minutes, they do their own thing but then partner off into twos to pass between them, and these tend to be quite telling partnerships: Ferran Torres and Eric Garcia, the two young Spaniards; Mahrez and Mendy, the French speakers; Jesus and Cancelo, two Portuguese speakers, and then Rodri and Gundogan, who are very important at the heart of the City midfield.

Borrell hands out bibs of different colours and then it’s the usual warm-up routine for the starters, led by Lorenzo Buenaventura, Guardiola’s trusted fitness coach. They’re seen squatting down low to warm up the quads and hamstrings, shuttling from side to side swaying their arms about, lifting their legs over imaginary gates.

The subs do this too, with lesser intensity, on the near side of the pitch. Their warm-up is a lot more laidback and indeed, half the subs don’t always come out for a few minutes, and then their ball work will mostly be keeping the ball up in the air in a little circle. Whoever loses gets their ear flicked.

The starting XI then break off into little groups of three or four. They pass it around between themselves quite casually and then it turns into a four-vs-one rondo, not especially intense. They then all return to the far side for a bigger rondo with eight around the outside and two in the middle.

The goalkeepers have been working on crosses and kicking but then everybody is back to the near side of the pitch for a shooting drill, where the players line up behind each other, pass it into feet, get it back and shoot. Mikel Arteta used to lay the ball off but it rotates around some of the players now, with Phil Foden doing it quite often. Zack Steffen goes in goal while Ederson continues working on his kicking, and the other subs keep the ball in the air again. The winner of the shooting drill gets to choose Pep Guardiolas match-day cardigan.

The starters do little short bursts of sprinting along the near touchline and then they’re off down the tunnel again. Some of the subs, depending on who they are, can stay out for a little longer playing around. On one occasion, Foden stayed out the longest, dribbling a ball all the way up to the goal and booting it in long after everyone else had gone in.

That tells us a lot about Foden and his desire to kick a ball around no matter what. As for the team, there’s a lot of focus on short, sharp passes, although this can change depending on the type of game: against Newcastle away at the end of last season the centre-backs worked on heading the ball, which was partly to get them acclimatised to tracking the ball against a backdrop of empty black and white seats.

With City, it can be a case of different warm-ups for different needs, but the focus on passing, predictably, is always there.



Leicester City

This hasn’t altered much during Brendan Rodgers’ time as manager. It starts an hour before kick-off when Kasper Schmeichel and the other goalkeepers come out and begin by practising their distribution before some close-range saving drills.

The rest of the players usually come out 40 minutes before kick-off and split into three groups. They begin with small-sided passing drills before the starting XI are involved in more dynamic warm-up exercises under the guidance of the club’s fitness and conditioning coach Matt Reeves.

Leicester City, warm up
(Photo: Glyn Kirk/Pool/Getty Images)
The substitutes continue with keepy-up drills in a circle while goalkeeping coach Mike Stowell continues to work with Schmeichel and substitute goalkeeper Danny Ward, plus third choice keeper Eldin Jakupovic, firing balls into them out of his hands from the penalty spot.

Reeves then moves to work with the substitutes, utilising similar dynamic stretching exercises. The players are always moving. The starters return to short, close-range ball work before switching to a short-sided game in a square, where one team hunts the ball in the middle and the other side must protect it.

Coach Kolo Toure will then work with the back five, especially the back three who work on their shape, practising dropping as a unit as they take it in turns to attack high balls and balls bounced into them, while the attacking players will join the keepers for shooting drills.

[wiw]

Got a strange sense of deja vu reading that..

[Buzzo]

Some (Most?) articles on the Athletic smack of a real desperation for creating unique content.

[wiw]

Some (Most?) articles on the Athletic smack of a real desperation for creating unique content.

Have you read what you posted? (thank you for posting btw!)

[kingfunk]

Is Steve Peters still working with is?

[Buzzo]

Have you read what you posted? (thank you for posting btw!)

...I read the Liverpool bit!

[wiw]

...I read the Liverpool bit!

So did I...twice! Think you copy and pasted the text for the Liverpool bit twice, as it's duplicated. I was reading it thinking '**** me this is familiar'